Student Entrepreneurs in India | LiveMint.com

Annupama Chandrasekaran of Livemint.com offers us an inside look at India’s some of India’s student entrepreneurs and their firms.

Welcome to India’s student start-ups—companies founded by people in graduate and postgraduate schools across the country. When the National Entrepreneurship Network conducted its First Dot National Competition for student start-ups earlier this year, it received 99 applications from 19 cities; 44 were from non-metropolitan cities. Interestingly, the founders of 54 were from non-metropolitan cities. And only four of the 99 came from families that earned more than Rs25 lakh a year.

And later,

There’s a pattern in the 99 applications received by NEN that is true of student start-ups in general. Areas requiring low capital investment such as IT services, mobile communication services and e-commerce are hotspots for start-ups. There aren’t so many student start-ups in capital-intensive sectors such as infrastructure. Some service sectors, which have seen activity, are the health-care, education, financial services and entertainment sectors.

“There’s still a hangover of the dot-com era and it does make me worry when a student talks about a Web-based business,” says R.S. Veeravalli, who oversees the entrepreneurship cell at Great Lakes Institute of Management. “The grim reality is that just 10 out of 1,000 ventures succeed.”

There article offers some interesting graphics comprised of data on the 99 firms, their founders, and teams. Moreover, Mint will be doing a series on student entrepreneurs in India throughout April and May. Looking forward to learning more.